Viral marketing is a technique that aims to get consumers interested in a product or a company quickly. It includes all marketing techniques and its main feature is the spread of content through word of mouth, which makes it popular and multiplies the effects of the campaign on the audience. The objective of viral marketing is to create brand recognition.
what campaigns exist to achieve viral marketing?
There are many methods of viral marketing, but the following five are the best known and most effective:
- The "pass it on" campaign: This consists of encouraging people to invite other users. It is usually done through a chain of messages that includes a request to the recipient to forward the message. WhatsApp is currently the best option.
- The so-called "incentivised viral" campaign: This campaign offers a reward for forwarding the message or giving someone's email address - a way to increase the chances of mass mailing dramatically.
- Covert marketing: A message that is presented as an attractive or unusual page, activity or news item, i.e. a shocking news item is disseminated, which puzzles and the user does not really know where it leads. Therefore, a large diffusion is created due to the uncertainty created by the news item.
- Fan club: Thanks to them, it is possible to have a place to talk about the brand and only interested parties can go there, and benefit from promotions or news in advance. In many cases, these pages are created voluntarily, so if this is the case, it is important that there is no link between the brand and the page in order to offer greater freedom to the audience.
- Use the word free. A good viral marketing strategy is to give away or offer something for free, without risk and that provides value. For example: an eBook, a small course, a plugin or application. Depending on your niche you can boost your viral campaign using the concept of giving away something valuable for free. Contests also work very well.
what are the benefits of viral marketing?
As we have already told you, thanks to viral marketing, users become interested and recognise the brand quickly, but it also has other types of benefits that we are now going to tell you about:
- Economic: A viral marketing campaign, in terms of financial resources, has a much lower investment than other types of advertising campaigns, so the ROI or rate of return will be positive.
- Multidiffusion: On the web there is a wide variety of ways to promote and disseminate, from creating a fan page on Instagram to placing a video online on any social network, Facebook contests, blogs...
- High interaction on social networks: As the content is liked, it is shared, but also commented on and recommended. This is a sure way to get to the top of the recommended content, so the process goes on and on.
- Audience segmentation: Segmentation is also applied in viral marketing and in fact, it is very good for reaching certain types of audience. Even actions that involve user participation allow you to collect information that can be used to segment your target audience according to the criteria you deem appropriate.
- Brand building: Increase the exposure of your brand and this type of campaign will serve to reinforce it.
- Quality of impact: The receiver of the message participates actively, so their attitude is positive, as opposed to the passivity of other more traditional types of advertising.
- It is not invasive: In viral marketing, the decision to participate and share is always made by our users, so it is not perceived as invasive advertising. In this way, the perception of the brand and the interaction benefit compared to more classic or traditional advertising campaigns.
what are the disadvantages of viral marketing?
Despite the many benefits of viral marketing, there are also two major disadvantages:
- Due to its own momentum, viral marketing is never completely controllable. If customers make negative experiences with your product, it will also spread quickly.
- Achievements are difficult to measure. It takes a lot of effort to be able to do direct research. However, online services like Google Analytics can help you with this.
Finally, remember that successful viral marketing and inbound marketing is all about analysing the market and finding out what the available gap is in order to achieve your goal. The idea is to satisfy the needs and desires of consumers and you need to emphasise the aspects that differentiate you from the competition. There are also no limits to creating viral content. Whatever service or product you offer, you can achieve real brand awareness with this technique.
